Saturday, April 30, 2005

I beseech you. . .

Do not buy this! If you have any belief whatsoever in the concept of Original Sin, you must not allow this stuff into your home. A very dear friend of mine gave me a couple of jars -- white chocolate, and cinnamon-raisin. And now, she must be banished.

All my life, I've been blissfully smearing Jif on white, convinced it was the closest approximation to heavenly rewards available on this rock. Well, now that's all been blown to smithereens.

You know who you are. Thank you very much. It would have been nice to know beforehand that you talk to serpents in your free time.

Now, I have to go into the mountains for a while and contemplate the universe. I will be a changed man upon my return.

I'm a man of simple pleasures. . .

. . .as I've rarely ever been able to afford more than that. And, there have been times when I've not even been able to afford the simplest of them -- such as the past six months. But, now that I have a full-time job, I can spend a little cash on a few of my creature comforts. One of the first things I bought with my first full week's paycheck was a bag of whole-bean coffee.

Over the past several months, I'd lamentably developed a taste for the pre-ground stuff, because I had no choice. The transition wasn't pleasant, but it beats the hell out of adjusting to the loss of a limb, or some other real human challenge. But, the upside is that getting back to the good stuff makes it seem all-the-better. And, the great thing about whole-bean coffee is that even the cheapest stuff is a tenfold improvement over the most expensive pre-ground stuff. So, I bought the cheapest beans I could find at Wal-Mart -- 8 O'Clock Colombian.

The first thing I did upon arriving home was to search the grocery bags for the coffee, dump some into the grinder, set it for the ultra-fine espresso grind -- and hit the button. Twice. (One run-through leaves the grounds too coarse, and it's just not as flavorful.) And, once I got the coffee started, I set about putting away the rest of the groceries. The smell of fresh-ground coffee brewing fills a room like nothing else. There's an almost buttery taste in the air that makes you want to run to the coffee maker and huff the fumes like a juvenile delinquent with a mason jar of paint thinner.

When the pot finally finished brewing, I poured myself a cup and took that first sip. For a moment, I was transported to a place where everyone wears white linen and struggles over how late is properly late in showing up for a cocktail party later in the evening. Then, just as suddenly, I was transported back to my humble abode, where I struggle over just how much later I get to sleep in the morning if I go ahead and press my work clothes at night.

But, that brief taste of a life of leisure is something you can't get out of a can of Folger's or Maxwell House. The best you can hope to get out of those is a slight jolt to help prepare you for the remainder of your forty hours. You drink them at work. Drink something else after work. It's a relatively inexpensive escape compared to travel or heroin. And, there's no packing, no needle tracks, and no terminal diseases. Just a few jitters that might interfere with your ability to play Jenga.

Friday, April 29, 2005

A mystery of bachelorhood. . .

. . .confronted me this week. Well, actually, it's been confronting me for a few weeks, now -- I just got around to confronting it back this week. It's a question that I've been turning over in my head ever since it became noticeable -- or, "to the point where I can no longer ignore it".

Namely, I can't figure out how the hell my bathtub drain became clogged. It wasn't like that when I moved in. I could take a shower for as long as the hot water reserves would hold up, and the water would flow as easily down the drain as beer down the gullet of, well, me. But, for some reason, over the last few weeks I've noticed a steady rise in the water level in my bathtub as I hurriedly shower before going to work.

This is disconcerting for several reasons -- the biggest of which is that it gives you the sense that you're standing almost ankle-deep in dirt soup when you're trying to get clean. That's a pretty unclean feeling. Made even more unclean-feeling by the fact that the temperature of the water isn't as hot on the bottom of the tub as it is coming out of the shower head. So, by the end of a shower, I feel like looking at my feet to make sure there aren't any leeches or algae between my toes.

Another discomfiting aspect is the fact that the drain managed to become clogged during the period that I've been living here. "I" as in "just me". And "I" don't have a lot of hair with which to clog a drain. I have less hair than most of the people I know, in fact. And, what hair I do have, I keep cut very short in a vain attempt to disguise my baldness as a matter of choice rather than heredity. What hair I've lost while showering since moving in wouldn't clog a coffee stirrer, much less a bathtub drain. So, it can't be that.

That leads me to think it's something terribly viscous that exudes from my pores. Again, not the most pleasant thought. I'm not a particularly filthy person. I do my best to bathe daily -- though, there are times when I am called away on secret missions that don't provide the luxury of daily washing. But, in those cases, I carry baby wipes. So, there shouldn't be a great deal of buildup.

Whatever it is, I bought a bottle of Dranō Max Professional Strength Gel -- because I'm a guy. I followed the directions on the label, more or less. That is, I did not ingest, made preparations for repeated eye flushing, and jotted down the number for the poison control center prior to tackling the noisome obstruction. It worked like a charm. The drain flows as well as it would if I'd pulled the plumming out and let the water fall directly onto the ground beneath my home. I'm hoping the Dranō Max Professional Strength Gel didn't dissolve my pipes. It said it wouldn't.

But, free-flowing plumbing doesn't come without a cost, as I noticed shortly after completing the instructions on the bottle. It seems that drain cleaner not only cleans your drain, it also cleans whatever part of your bathtub with which it comes into contact. That means that I now have a sparkling clean area about eight inches in diameter surrounding my bathtub drain -- and it's making the rest of my bathtub look really dirty.

So, now, I'm confronted with a whole new problem: I have to clean my bathtub, or just pretend I didn't see what I saw. At this point, I could go either way on it. It's Friday night, and I don't particularly care to take on any kind of cleaning operation right now. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow, or Sunday. But, for now, I'm content to avert my eyes while showering (something I'm used to).

However, I'm left with a question. Why the hell don't they just make bathroom cleaner out of the same stuff they make Dranō Max Professional Strength Gel out of? Wouldn't that fix both problems?

Thanks to Jeff. . .

. . .of Beautiful Atrocities for the link and the laughs. He has one of my favorite blogs going -- very sharp and wittily written. If you ever encounter an obscure pop culture reference that leaves you baffled, I'd ask Jeff if I were you.

Happy Birthday. . .

. . .wishes go out to the grand dame of conservative internet news, and a wonderful lady -- Lucianne Goldberg. It would be difficult to overstate her contribution to conservatism -- particularly over the last eight years. In the blight that was the Clinton era, she provided an internet home for the disaffected, disenchanted, and despondent conservative voter -- a place to vent.

Happy Birthday, Lucianne! Thank you and your hardworking, loyal staff for all that you've done, and all that you do. May this birthday be only half as happy as your next.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

A dear friend. . .

. . .emailed me today with the news that Laura Ingraham has been diagnosed with breast cancer. This is sad news, but not the end of the world by any means. Laura sounds positive on her site, and that's a great sign in its own right. Of course, your thoughts and prayers will be appreciated. Just ask Tony Snow.

Monday, April 25, 2005

The Anchoress has recently. . .

relocated with a brand new URL. Be sure to bookmark it, as she is a politically incorrect joy to read. I meant to post it at least a week ago. But, I've had a lot going on in my life, and the emails that told me about it kind of got shuffled down the inbox list and it slipped my mind.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

NASCAR. . .

. . .isn't my very favorite sport -- that will always be baseball. But, I do enjoy drinking beer and watching a race almost as much as going to a ballgame. Actually going to a race is something else entirely -- there isn't really any comparison. They're on two completely different levels. You start planning weeks, months, and in some cases years before a NASCAR race.

When I first started watching the sport, I picked my favorite driver based on nothing more than whose car looked coolest. At that time, I thought Morgan Shepherd's camouflage Remington Arms car was the sharpest out there, so he was my guy.

Well, now he's driving a different car. I hadn't heard much about him in a long time, until I was prompted to google him up after writing an email to a friend. When I checked to see what he's up to these days, I found out that he's driving the Victory in Jesus car, and is soliciting donations. I know some of my readers are Christians, and that some are NASCAR fans as well. So, I figure odds are at least a few are both. It's not such a bad message to put on TV screens every Sunday, is it? I mean, it's not like Barry Lynn watches NASCAR or anything -- so there's not much chance anyone's going to be offended.